If Hillary Clinton’s silence on the still-spreading email scandal has been designed to let defenders and apologists step into the breach and try to explain away the controversy, that strategy doesn’t appear to be working all that well.

Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” that the former secretary of state needs to come forward and explain the situation publicly.

As reported in an article on Yahoo! News, Feinstein didn’t try to defend Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account for official business during her four years as the nation’s chief diplomat.

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“I think she needs to step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is,” Feinstein said. “From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her.”

The New York Times notes that all the attention being focused on the email scandal brings to mind past Clinton controversies and makes some Democrats wonder if other shoes could drop — if future revelations could severely damage an anticipated Hillary Clinton presidential bid.

“Many senior Democrats appear anxious and said they hoped Mrs. Clinton would offer some clarity about why she had used her own email account to conduct government business.”

On the CBS program “Face the Nation” Sunday, Rep Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, put the email scandal into perspective with regard to the congressional investigation.

Gowdy said he needs to see many more of the former secretary of state’s emails than have been turned over to the committee thus far:

“’There are gaps of months and months and months,’ Mr. Gowdy said. ‘It strains credibility to believe if you’re on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy that there is not a single document to turn over to Congress.’

On her Fox News weekend show, Judge Jeanine Pirro joined the chorus of criticism of Mrs. Clinton’s secretive email practices, slamming the former State Department chief for running a “con game” on the American people.

Judge Jeanine compared Hillary Clinton to the fictional Claire Underwood, a devious and ruthless character on the popular NetFlix show, “House of Cards.”

“You don’t have to mean it. You just have to say it.” ~Claire Underwood.

By clicking on the video above, you can watch the fiery segment from “Justice with Judge Jeanine” to see what else the Fox News star says about Hillary as “a woman with a past, a history of evading, obfuscating, hiding.”